Final Feature Plans

[Captain Deathbeard]

I see a lot of posts around where players say that X feature is coming soon or Y feature isn't coming, and they are often mistaken because of my terrible communication. So I think I need to clarify things for everyone, which features are making it to release and which aren't.
Also we are getting nearer to the final release date, which we are estimating at the early side of 2017. This means unfortunately some of the less important "luxury" features will have to get dropped as it's more important to spend the extra time on bug-fixing and polishing the game as it is.

• -Quests/story
  This has never been a planned feature, Kenshi has always been sandbox-focused. There were however plans for a dynamic "job" system, which would generate small missions like "assassinate this guy" or "steal this item" etc. It's not likely that we will have time to add this feature before release, as I consider it less important to the gameplay than others.
• -Ranged Weapons (edited)
  I consider it probably the most important one listed here, at this point theres a 60% chance I will add it in soon, although it's not guaranteed yet.
• -Player Town Civilian Population
  I never really intended Kenshi to be a town building game in this respect, so I don't consider it an important feature, however it might be easy to implement if I use something like the existing bodyguard system
• -Diplomacy system
  I don't think I've ever been super clear on this, so I don't know what people are expecting. Basically it will be a system of dialogue options with faction leaders or representatives that affect their relations and actions. So for example you could tell the leader of one faction that you want to ally with them, they offer you a huge reward if you can kidnap their enemy leader, and as a result their enemy declares war on you and possibly starts launching assaults on your home base.
• -Limb amputation & robotic replacements
  Would have been great fun but unfortunately is a "luxury" feature so I have to drop it
• -Smuggling & illegal goods
  Will be in the next major update 0.94
• -Animal taming
  Again sadly another luxury feature that will have to be dropped. There are still animal companions that can be purchased though, so it's just the taming part that's missing.
• -Blood
  Should be in final release, as this is more of an artist's job and won't take time from the rest.
• -Weather
  As in weather that actually affects gameplay and characters. Right now we have cosmetic weather, and rain that affects crops. I'm hoping to have storms and things that harm characters in various ways and restrict visibility etc in the future map updates.
• -Town Assaults
  To clarify, these are “scripted” events where a faction starts coming to your base and making threats or demands, which then branch into bigger assaults on your base depending on how you deal with them. They can potentially be triggered by anything: base proximity, angering an individual, being too wealthy etc. The functionality is there, but they’ll be added in at the end as they take a lot of testing and balancing.

[Sol Lignum]

Sounds good! Screw the extra stuff, just make sure all the important things you wanted are there and working flawlessly, and the rest can wait.

What about post-1.0 though? Will it be a big period with occasional updates and fixes afterwards, or "good work is never over" ?

upd: also, may i translate it to Russian and publish on my workshop's page, so my fellow bears could stay informed as well?

[Bob]

This sounds good to me. It is what I'm expecting and have hoped for over the years.

I think it's good that you would listen to people here and elsewhere and take suggestions to heart, but this is your game and no one can make it as good as you can.

[toaster Assassin]

Almost close to leaving Beta, nice!

[Captain Deathbeard]

It's unfortunate, but I'd rather lay things out honestly now, and then any of the dropped features that DO make it in will be a nice surprise. We can't go on developing the same game forever, or eventually we would run out of money and drop dead.

In answer to some questions

1- I plan to still do updates for Kenshi for a long while after 1.0
2- I do have an idea for an expansion (not quite Kenshi 2, more like Kenshi 1.5), but it would be a new map with significant new (secret, and totally awesome) gameplay mechanics that have not been mentioned before, almost a new game, not mere DLC.
3- I will not charge extra for any features that were originally promised for the original game
4- If we make the expansion idea next, then we could also spend some of that time adding the dropped features and add them to the base game too (for free).

Yeah, I agree. I thought we'd have some semi-large wars, with factions taking over each others cities etc. Which they made it sound like on their road map (). (That it'd be dynamic). But I guess scripted 'mini' events could be fun, in a way.

This may be confusing, but scripted and dynamic is practically the same thing in Kenshi. The dialog system is dynamic, and events can be triggered by almost any conceivable situation, and those events could chain into other events. The main missing part would be the town take-over stuff, which could be a nightmare to do properly- most likely the game world would disintegrate after the first few days.

upd: also, may i translate it to Russian and publish on my workshop's page, so my fellow bears could stay informed as well?

Yes, please do. I'd like to do an official Russian translation, but due to the high word-count of the game (200,000 words!) translation costs are gonna be high, so it remains to be seen if they will cover their own costs or not.

[Mattk50]

Im most dissapointed in amputation/robotic limbs. when a limb gets under -100 its always felt unfinished that you just need to wait longer for it to heal as normal, when something serious should happen. I do understand the amount of work that would go into robotics and amputation is pretty high, though. Perhaps instead you could add critical injury at -100 where the limb can only begin to heal after a visit to specialized surgeons/surgery table+high skill medic, either just wandering in bars or with their own buildings. Would take a lot less work than adding a whole amputation and robotic surgery system thats for sure...

Im most looking forward to diplomacy/base assaults. Its the big endgame missing feature, the lack of threat to player bases/towns, even building in the fog just requires 2-3 turret operators and youll never really be in danger of having gates breached. Even if there is a breach usually bandits dont destroy anything and rarely take anything from your storage.

Otherwise i think if this list is completed as is for 1.0 kenshi will be pretty solid, honestly i can't wait to play the 1.0 version, i plan to spend a huge amount of time wandering around with whichever group of characters i end up using.

[Sol Lignum]

Yes, please do.

Thanks for the permission! Will do right away (in fact i've already translated everything and just grew doubtfull at the last moment, so decided to ask )

Considering amputations, how hard it would be to just add such functionality to a plastic surgeon? I mean, if limb is gone after being -100 for a specific period of time, then player could simply insta-replace it with robo-limb via a plastic surgeon, by checking a box next to a limb-specific slider or something. Then it would even be possible from the start.

[toaster Assassin]

This is a rather minor question:

Will it be possible for the player to craft the tables,benches,dividers and canopies that are seen throughout the cities? Basically the basic furniture sets in the average bar.

It would give the player structural shells more of an occupied/lived in look.

[TheCometCE]

Shame the robotic limb replacements are a no-go (maybe a modder can rig the skeleton model somehow to make this a thing), but very happy to see the final list for the game.

Keep up the great work, been following the title since the alpha hit steam, and enjoy every update

[Roccandil]

I second the ability to build interior walls and stuff!

Also, any chance for copper-mining Ore Drills? (And while I'm going crazy, how about Rain Barrels?)

[pigiron]

2- I do have an idea for an expansion (not quite Kenshi 2, more like Kenshi 1.5), but it would be a new map with significant new (secret, and totally awesome) gameplay mechanics that have not been mentioned before, almost a new game, not mere DLC.

Regarding this, I would pay real money for such a thing if/when it is offered. Kenshi sat for a few months in my wishlist on steam- I actually paid for it right before the Northern section opened up. It has gotten consistently better over time, and bugs have continued to grow scarcer.

There really isn't anything else out there quite like Kenshi. It can be brutally tough, but eventual success is sweet.

I'll take any free DLC you folk pass down the line, but "new (secret, totally awesome) gameplay mechanics" is a hell of a hook.

[polycount]

I've been following Kenshi for a very, very long time now, and it had a lot of promise. However, it seems it won't be delivering on a lot of that promise. It's a fun game, but there's still so many problems with it that I just don't see how you could possibly fix between now and release. If you say you can, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. I'm willing to see if you can deliver in that area. But it seems like everyone thinks the game is already in a near-finished state.

As we've learned from many, many games in the past (Both early access and AAA - Spacebase DF-9 and Mafia III are two good examples), releasing games in an unfinished state is not an acceptable business practice.

I still don't feel like the game plays like anything CLOSE to a finished game. The animations are still super ugly and unrealistic in many cases (When are workers going to stop swinging invisible pickaxes at a research bench?), and a lot of features feel unrefined and buggy - Stealth/thievery being one of them. As somebody who always likes to go a stealthy route in games, it seems like carefully planning a stealthy assault on a base (Perhaps even with little to no detections) will never be reality in Kenshi. Being that this is one of the major things you advertised years ago on the early access page (I see you've restructured it and reworded many things now - That's a good thing for newbies, not so good for some of us older backers), I'm disappointed to see it in such a poor state right now.

Combat animations still need a lot of work, as well, and I'm sorry, but I don't see how ranged weapons could be considered anything less than a critical feature. I don't care one way or the other personally, but ranged combat would add some much-needed variety to the combat system, and the gameplay in general. Sneaking through a camp, attempting to silently break one of your buddies out using a crossbow (With limited ammunition and perhaps poor skill) would be simply amazing. Not to mention the fact that it just makes zero sense for humans in this fictional world to not have the concept of ranged weaponry down. I am pleased to hear that you consider this an important feature for the future, though, but I still think it should be in the game upon release. But hey, I know you only have certain amounts of resources to dedicate to certain things within a certain time frame, so it's all good.

The menus still feel extremely unfinished, as well. It's hard to describe this exactly, so if you don't know what I mean, consider this a null point - I can't very well bash you on something that I can't even articulate myself (I'm not bashing at all, btw, poor choice of words)! But, basically, it's not always clear what a given menu option is going to do, or what the consequences of performing various actions might be.

This "Kenshi 1.5" thing sounds interesting, but I'm not going to get my hopes up. We paid for a good "Kenshi 1.0", and we should expect a full, finished and polished game when it leaves Beta. Bugs, etc. are understandable, of course. No game is immune to those upon release. However, there shouldn't be a ton of missing or unfinished features just "To be finished later". I'm sorry, but we as backers (And players) deserve more than that. We've probably all been burned dozens of times before.

Especially those of us who supported you from the very beginning.

To end this somewhat long-winded and rambling post, let me just say this: I am not bashing or hating on you guys at all. As I've said several times now, I've been with you from the start, and I'll be with you for the foreseeable future. Kenshi is a potentially fantastic game, and the amount of features and work already put into it are nothing short of phenomenal (Despite the stuff I said above). It's clearly a labor of love.

All I ask is that you don't pop out 1.0 and leave us all out to dry, and that you actually deliver a finished 1.0 game.

Thanks for reading.

[Sol Lignum]

(...) When are workers going to stop swinging invisible pickaxes at a research bench? (...)

You have a general point.

However, as a fair notice: characters doesn't swing their pikeaxe at a research table for quite a bunch o' versions now

[toaster Assassin]

I know they still do for the ore processors.

if they switch the animation of that for say a button pressing one/wheel turning one, could be a quick fix.

[Sol Lignum]

I know they still do for the ore processors. (...)

You can always say that characters just splitting mined ore from stones or something, though

[Roccandil]

The animations don't bother me. Pathing, hauling, and wall-building do.

So does the texture-loading. I've gotten to where I'll leave someone at base so I can "warp" back to them from a distant location (using reset squad locations) and skip all the texture loading and pathing miscues inbetween,

[Evilmagic]

Will there be any faction interaction at all? Currently it just feels as if the world is dead/stagnant. You have all these different races and cultures with different dynamics and you set it up so they react to each other but then you say that there will be no scenarios that it exists? Theres those flotsam ninjas up north who are all "hey join us" but if you do you'll never see any of your "fellow" anti-holy nation people fighting the holy nation because they have no overlapping spawns that i've managed to find. The town cap thing was one of the only features i was looking forward too, especially looking forward to seeing armies from the other factions duke it out.

[huckc]

Town Assaults would be mint. The icing on the cake.

It'd be so fun to defending against sieges. Close the gates and man the harpoons while the storm clouds gather. Perhaps even recall your A squad if things are looking grim...

It'd also make existing things like turrets and prisoner cages more viable.

[polycount]

The animations don't bother me. Pathing, hauling, and wall-building do.

So does the texture-loading. I've gotten to where I'll leave someone at base so I can "warp" back to them from a distant location (using reset squad locations) and skip all the texture loading and pathing miscues inbetween,

I agree, there's obviously some higher priority stuff that needs to be addressed, but my point is that the animations shouldn't just be left in their current state for a "finished" game.

A finished game should have finished animations that make sense. They don't need to be the most brilliant, dazzling and smooth animations to grace gods green earth, but at least better than what we've got.

But yes, there's a lot of stuff that needs to be fixed and updated. Pathing is definitely one of the other major things I'd like to see fixed and improved. I just don't see how this is a 0.93 game right now, but maybe there will be a hundred more .001 versions or something. Dunno.

[Cat_Fuzz]

How much money would be needed to finish the game with at least faction interactions? Is it worth starting a Kickstarter project if funds are the main issue? As a long time backer I got this game at a discount but I'd be willing to pay the difference I'd paid before to see this game complete with one of its main attractions in game. I can live without robotics / taming etc but factions fighting each over, being recruited by the and joining existing ones would be one thing I'd like to see.